REPLACE 2 Project Updates: 11th August 2014

REPLACE 2 in the Guardian and at the Girl Summit 2014

The last couple of weeks have been very exciting for the project, with Professor Hazel Barrett talking to the Guardian and speaking at the Girl Summit 2014. 

Hazel spoke with the Guardian about REPLACE 2 and its community- based approach to tackling female genital mutilation. To read the full article please click here . 

Hazel was also invited to talk at the high profile Girl Summit event in London, hosted by the prime minister and attended by some key figures and influential individuals committed to ending FGM. Hazel talked about the REPLACE 2 approach to measuring community based behaviour change as part of the ‘Measuring progress in addressing FGM, CEFM and changes in Social Norms’ session. Specifically, Hazel talked about the community readiness index, used by the REPLACE 2 approach to establish how ready the community is to make changes. The interventions that will be developed for each community involved in the REPLACE 2 project will be appropriately targeted in relation to their level of readiness to change. As well as giving us an indication of developing tailored interventions for the community, the community readiness index also allows monitoring and evaluation of how community norms are changing over time as a result of specific interventions or campaigns. Applying a community readiness model to an FGM affected community is a novel but fundamental part of the community-based behaviour change approach and REPLACE 2 will be evaluating and adapting the model throughout the project to develop a tool that can be followed and applied by others working with FGM affected communities.

The next few weeks will be focussed on data analysis, with the team at Coventry University applying a theory driven approach in order to pull out important information that will inform the development of the tailored interventions for each community.